


the woes of baking

by epanouiii



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: (ง'̀-'́)ง, Angst, Birthday, Crack, Crack?, Cutesy, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Neglect, M/M, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, Sokka Deserves More Recognition, and the tiniest bit of, but we arent here to talk abt that shizball today, fite me, like it's all mostly at the start
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:29:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26284978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epanouiii/pseuds/epanouiii
Summary: Zuko's never cared much about his birthday. He doesn't see the point in it. But that won't stop him from caring about his boyfriend's.Or, Zuko tries to bake Sokka a cake for his birthday.
Relationships: Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 162





	the woes of baking

**Author's Note:**

> this was initially written on a whim. like the idea came to me while i was making brownies (recipe in [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixe_NYTSFwo) yt video) and i quickly jotted it down in my notes before i forgot and while they were baking i started typing.
> 
> all u rly need to know abt this is that the gaang are all in their early to mid twenties and its based in a modern atla world. also forgive some of the words used bc im using vernacular that ppl from my country use and its not common?? maybe??? around the rest of the world. idk if u need me to translate just comment abt it lol
> 
> ten points to ur hogwarts house if u can guess where im from
> 
> tw in end notes

They’re hanging out in his and Sokka’s apartment on a Friday night, and Zuko doesn’t know how it comes up, but one minute they’re talking about what they’ve been doing recently, and the next about birthdays.

He’s never really cared about his own. It was just the day he was born on. His mum and uncle would always make a big deal about it, though (or as big as they could). Probably to make up for the fact his dad ignored the day almost entirely—especially when he was younger. He remembers, vividly, walking into the dining room one morning and seeing streamers and balloons decorating every available surface. His mum and uncle were at the unnecessarily long dining table—along with a disgruntled-looking Azula—everyone seated around a large, white birthday cake with wax candles stuck in the middle. 

He turned ten that day. 

But after his mum died, they’d stopped it with the overt celebrations. Normally his uncle just takes him out to lunch and Azula doesn’t antagonise him as much as usual. Sometimes she even sends him a birthday card in the mail, all of which he keeps in a box at the back of the wardrobe, tucked underneath a bunch of other boxes.

He tells everyone this—albeit a much shorter, less sad version—when the conversation eventually turns to him. Everyone gives him mildly pitying looks, barring Sokka who already knows from their many drunk vent-sessions and just leans up from where his head is resting on Zuko’s shoulder to kiss his cheek (which flares red, even after all this time, much to everyone’s loud amusement), and then the conversation turns to Katara and Sokka, who admit they’d never made a big deal out of theirs either. Though for a very different reason.

Zuko’s heard it all before, after one too many drinks on Sokka’s part, back when they hadn’t got their shit together and admitted to being hopelessly in love with each other, so he circles Sokka’s rough hands with his own and holds them.

Sokka lets out a deep breath next to his ear. It tickles. “We were poor for most of their lives,” he begins, his voice steady, if a bit quiet, looking down at their joint hands. “Our dad was away at sea for most of the year, and he usually missed our birthdays. It got even worse when mum passed away. His trips got longer and longer, and soon we only saw him for two months out of the whole year. He sent us cards and stuff, don’t get me wrong, but he was just never _there_.” Sokka’s breath shakes slightly. Zuko grips his hand tighter. “Gran Gran always made our favourite things for dinner. But, yeah, it just…wasn’t a big deal.” He raises his head to share a look with Katara, who’s curled into Aang’s towering frame, her eyes—a deep blue like Sokka’s—shining with what looked suspiciously like tears.

“Old habits die hard, I guess.”

The end of their night approaches quickly, and soon everyone is leaving, hugging and shouting despite the time of night and promising to hang out again soon. They have a rota, and the location of their hangouts changes every time. Last time it was Suki’s apartment, his and Sokka’s tonight, and next is Toph and Katara’s. He hasn’t been over in a while. He hasn’t been anywhere, really, outside of their apartment, the university and Uncle’s home above the Jasmine Dragon. But they were all miraculously free tonight, and it was one of the first times they’ve hung out together in weeks. Everyone tries as much as possible to find time to hang out. Sometimes it just isn’t enough. 

Aang and Katara leave first, and Toph—punching him in the shoulder and jumping on Sokka’s back like a wild hog monkey—follows. Suki is the last to leave, caught up in a debate with Sokka about the mechanics of a boomerang-fan(?) until Zuko finally shepherds her out of the apartment as well, hugging her goodbye and waiting until she disappears behind a wall before shutting the door. 

And then, their apartment is empty. 

Sokka’s picking up the wrappers of the takeaway they’d ordered—Indian food—when Zuko walks back into their tiny living room.

“I thought we agreed it was my turn to clean up?” He lifts an eyebrow, hands on his hips. Sokka just pretends to whistle. 

“ _Sokka_ ,” he stresses, and his boyfriend finally turns around, his arms bundled with leftover takeaway containers and cups.

“Well, you were too busy playing host so I made the executive decision to be a good boyfriend and clean up.” He smiles, and it’s endearing, and how can Zuko be angry at that? He really did have a good boyfriend. What made the universe make _this_ his reality? “I don’t even know why you’re mad. You should be happy you don’t have to do it yourself.” His logic is flawed, but then again, Sokka’s always been the type of person to want to feel useful. 

“I’m mad because you look practically dead on your feet,” he says, slowly, and even though Sokka rolls his eyes, Zuko can see the bruises weighing heavy under them, the way his shoulders slumped when Suki stood up to go. “I don’t even know why we hosted today.”

“But the rota!”

“Fuck the rota. I mean, you had a lecture in the morning and a five hour shift immediately after.”

“Babe, I’m fine.” He has the audacity to roll his eyes again. “I appreciate the concern, but there’s nothing to worry about. In fact, I’ll go have a shower right now!” He proclaims, then proceeds to drop all of the rubbish in his hands and skip off into the hallway leading to their bedroom.

“That’s not what I meant!”

Sokka’s throaty laugh is all he gets as a reply.

Weeks pass, and Zuko finds himself in Katara and Toph’s kitchen as the former stirs a pot of…something, the latter lying down on the bench as she fidgets with her phone. They’ve all met up again, this time for a home-cooked dinner curtesy of Gran Gran’s recipe.

“What is that again?” He asks, peaking from his seat at the kitchen bench to see a brownish soup. Inside are some kind of dark purple vegetables, their skin thin and wispy.

Katara turns her eyes to him—blue, but not as blue as her brother’s—her hands continuing to stir whatever’s in the pot. “Sea prunes! I saw some on sale at the market the other day and thought they’d make a great stew.”

“Oh. Well, they smell good,” he says, only half lying. They don’t smell _bad_ , per se, but they don’t smell as nice as his tone suggests they are. By the snort Toph gives, she totally sees through it. He doesn’t dare mention his hesitancy, though, because Katara used to hate him back when he was just Sokka’s moody, angsty, ill intentioned-looking best friend and they didn’t know each other very well. He waits for the day she taps back into that hatred. Katara just smiles widely. 

Of course, the dirty-footed gremlin has to ruin it.

“Lies!”

“Toph, just because you don’t like sea prunes doesn’t mean other people don’t,” she says, and something in the way she says it tells him this same conversation has taken place before.

“It’s a matter of principle.”

Trying to steer them away from an inevitable argument, Zuko asks: “Where did you learn to cook it?”

Toph, incensed by having her plans thwarted, huffs and goes back to her phone. “Gran Gran,” Katara says. “She didn’t want us to forget her recipes, so she forced Sokka and I to learn them all. We’d always help her with dinner on each other’s birthdays, actually. It was kind of like a present, since we couldn’t spare enough money to buy anything. When we had the ingredients, Sokka would always make a cake. He’s really good at baking, for all he complains about it.”

He tilts his head. “Really? I thought baking was the same as cooking?”

“Zuko,” she says slowly, like you would to someone who doesn’t speak english. Or whose sanity is in question. “Cooking and baking are two completely different things.”

“Ugh. Rich kids.”

“Toph, _you’re_ a rich kid.”

“Semantics.” She waves her hand in the air.

“Do you even know what semantics _means_? It doesn’t apply to the situation at all—“

As they bicker (he seriously wonders why they share an apartment, and why it isn’t in flames constantly, because it’s a war zone), Zuko thinks over what she said. 

He and Sokka have lived together for a while—more than a year, dating even longer—and he’s never heard that little tidbit from his boyfriend. Sure, he knows Sokka loves to bake. He’s a stress baker, and as a guy studying engineering on top of working a part-time job at his university, Sokka has stress in _spades_. So why has he never mentioned it? Was he ashamed or something? Worried Zuko would care, when he literally couldn’t care less about Sokka’s socioeconomic background? _How can he…?_

“Hey, Katara,” he says, successfully cutting into their bickering session and stealing Katara’s attention again. Toph blows out some air and stomps into the living room, where he can hear yelling. “Do you think you can teach me how to bake?”

“I…don’t think that would be a good idea. There’s a reason Sokka’s the one who bakes. I always end up either under-baking or burning it.” His shoulder’s slump. There goes _that_ idea. It must give him away, because she says next: “But if you want to that badly just ask him! He loves feeling important, and having someone to teach will definitely make him feel important.”

“Yeah.” He looks over his shoulder to see Sokka on the floor of the living room, Suki laughing from the couch as (from the noises of defeat) Sokka loses to Aang, with Toph commentating Sokka’s loss. “Maybe I’ll do that.”

When they get home, Sokka immediately heads for their bedroom, claiming he needs a shower. Zuko doesn’t say anything and takes a seat on the couch, happy for a reason to gather his thoughts. 

He doesn’t know why he’s hesitated all night to ask. Katara was right—Sokka would probably be all for Zuko learning how to bake. Ecstatic, even! He can imagine the smile on Sokka’s face, the light in his eyes as he rambles about all the different desserts they can bake. 

He thinks about Sokka’s birthday, the casual dismissal of it. He doesn’t want his boyfriend to feel like he isn’t worth having a day dedicated entirely to him. 

He’s still thinking when Sokka comes waltzing into their living room, his hair damp and hanging in front of his face. He’s handsome, as always, and Zuko’s weak in the face of it.

“Wanna watch _Nailed It_?”

He snorts like he’d ever say no to his boyfriend. “Didn’t you once say they ‘desecrated the sacred art of baking’?”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun to talk shit about the contestants.”

They’re three episodes in when Zuko, his nerves grated on the host’s voice, blurts out that he wants to learn how to bake. Sokka—who was in the middle of commenting on the sloppy technique of one of the competitors— _”look at how they scoop the batter in! It’s getting everywhere! You’d think their mum didn’t teach them how to hold a fucking fork!”_ —stops mid-sentence, his whole face lighting up as he turns away from the tv to throw his arms around Zuko’s shoulders. 

“I never thought you’d ask!” His laugh of disbelief is wounding, but then Sokka pulls back and kisses him squarely on the mouth, a hand tugging at Zuko’s hair, and his boyfriend’s doubts are forgiven. The sound of the host's grating voice drifts into the background under Sokka’s ministrations, his small moans that have Zuko reeling. It isn’t until minutes later that Sokka pulls away, his mouth red and pouty and pulled up into a grin. “And don’t worry about being bad, I’m sure you won’t be as horrible as these people.” He gestures to said people, who are currently running around the set like a trio of headless chickens, the host—he’s really gotta learn her name, it’s probably rude to not know the name of the person you mock silently in your head—cackling in the background.

At Zuko’s pout, Sokka laughs again and pulls him in for another kiss.

As it turns out, he’s just as bad—if not worse—than the people in the show.

Sokka starts him out with bread. He tries to asks why, since its not a dessert, but Sokka stops him before he can get very far.

“Zuko,” he says slowly, blue eyes gleaming with barely-concealed mirth, “not all baked goods are sweets, you know.”

_He, in fact, did not know._

“Uh, yeah…I totally knew that.” He ignores the urge to scratch the back of his neck, it’d be a dead give away. But he doesn’t need to, because Sokka catches it anyway. It’s what he gets for having been around him since he was 16. After a while, you seem to know the other person better than yourself. It also doesn’t help that they’ve been dating for over half of the time they’ve known each other. 

It’s how Zuko knows exactly what Sokka says next. 

“Rich kids.”

“Oy!”

His boyfriend just laughs and moves on with the bread. He lets Zuko do most of the steps, though cuts in after he doesn’t “develop the gluten in the dough enough.” In a solid show of trust, Sokka leaves him to pop it in the oven and set a timer.

It was misplaced, however, as half an hour later he comes back to a smoky oven and a lump of coal in the bread pan.

“What the hell did you do?” He squawks, running into the kitchen and practically body slamming Zuko out of the way. The left side of his body hurts, because while he might be taller than he boyfriend, he certainly isn’t as built, and Sokka’s got muscles _on_ his muscles. In between his job at the university as a lab assistant and his studying, he also goes to the gym. A _lot_. 

Zuko, whenever he gets time to work out, has stopped going with him. Seeing him all worked up, his muscles straining as he benchpresses almost double Zuko’s weight—it’s hotter than he’ll admit. And he _really_ doesn’t want to be fined for public indecency. 

It’s as Zuko’s massaging his bicep that he eyes catch something on the recipe. “Uh…I might have misread the temperature.”

Sokka’s eyes as he looks at him make him feel like a bigger dum-dum (as Azula would so eloquently put it) than usual. He can imagine her here with them now, standing beside Sokka and laughing, his childhood nickname on the tip of her tongue. _Zuzu._ “How did you get 230 degrees and 330 degrees mixed up?”

“To be fair, I’m partially blind in my left eye.”

This pattern persists for the next few weeks, during which they try out a multitude of things. 

After he can make a decent—‘decent’—loaf of bread, Sokka gets him to make cupcakes. He burns them, which isn’t a surprise to anyone, and they take all night to scrape out of the muffin tin. Then, he tries his hand at brownies—which are surprisingly easy to make. You just have to throw a bunch of dry ingredients into a bowl and add liquid, before pouring it all into a pan and putting it into the oven. They don’t even come out burnt after the second time! That’s mostly because Zuko waits the whole baking process in the kitchen, trying to busy himself on his phone, but unable to because the irrational fear that he’ll pull out _another_ burnt thing has him looking up from his screen every ten seconds. So he ends up sitting on the bench, staring at the oven and checking it every ten minutes. It used to be every five, but Sokka told him that it lets out the hot air in the oven. This meant the baking time—and by extension, Zuko’s panic time—is prolonged. He’s sure all this worrying isn’t good for his blood pressure. And by the time Sokka brings out the cakes, he’s had enough minor heart attacks to earn him a permanent place in the cardiac care ward of the hospital Katara interns at.

The sun has barely begun to creep over the horizon when he carefully peels Sokka’s heavy arm off his chest. 

He’s woken up early—earlier than usual. Some—and by some, he means Toph—would call it an overkill, but Sokka doesn’t often sleep in on days he usually goes to university, even if doesn’t have class for the next two weeks. So, in case Zuko fucks up and needs to start again, he wakes up at seven.

Sokka snorts once at the disturbance, loudly, and he thinks he’s been caught. His limbs lock. The room is silent—non including his heart pounding in his chest, deafening to Zuko’s ears—enough that he fears Sokka might hear it too. But then he rolls over, mumbling Zuko’s name once—his heart somersaults in his chest—he wants to climb back into bed and forget everything—before settling down on Zuko’s side of bed, which is probably still warm from his body heat.

Still, as a naturally suspicious person with horrible luck, Zuko doesn’t dare unlock his limbs. It isn’t until Sokka’s breath deepens that he gives himself the go-ahead. He leaves their bedroom, eyeing the wardrobe as he moves past it, opening and trying to close the door with such delicate precision he spends five minutes hyping himself up.

The lock clicks—quietly, he hopes—and his shoulders drop. Step one, done. Next, the baking. 

He goes to the kitchen, tiptoeing all the while, and begins to pull out the necessary ingredients and utensils. This will be the first time he’s baking alone. It was probably a bad idea to wait until now, the one time he doesn’t have Sokka looming over his shoulder, the ever-present worrier, but he’s never been much of a long-term planner, so he just sends a quick prayer to whatever spirits are looking over him and gets to work. He’s making a simple chocolate cake; 1) because it’s Sokka’s favourite; and 2) it’s all he can make without burning down their apartment.

The process goes by without error, though Zuko almost drops the bowl with all of the ingredients twice before catching it and spending the next five minutes in a frozen, stupefied kind of terror—the kind that gets people run over by trains because they don’t _move_ —as he waits for the sound of Sokka waking up, coming into the kitchen and having his surprise ruined. But that doesn’t happen, and soon, the cake is sitting on the cooling rack not looking half-bad. He prepared a vanilla icing the night before, hiding it behind a bunch of containers so Sokka wouldn’t see, and he spreads it quickly on the cooled cake. Standing back, he mentally pats himself on the back, smirking at nothing until his phone alarm knocks him out of it like a punch to the face.

_9:30_.

It’s early enough that Sokka will be sleepy enough to not notice if the cake is undercooked, but late enough that he won’t throw the cake out the window if he hates it.

Plating two pieces, he takes a deep breath and walks towards their bedroom, his eyes roving over every chocolatey crumb, searching for any burns or sludge. Then he’s at their bedroom door, and he’s knocking, and when he opens the door with two plates balanced precariously on one arm Sokka’s sitting up with bedhead almost adorable enough to distract Zuko from his internal monologue of _you should’ve just order a cake the night before._

“What’s this?” Sokka asks, sleepy and incredibly cuddly-looking, when Zuko places one plate in his lap. He smiles and leans in for a kiss. It’s soft, and he warms. But before they can get carried away, Zuko pulls back. It happens more often then he’d like to admit. 

“Happy birthday!” 

The recognition in Sokka’s eyes is late.

“Oh…right.”

“You sound confused.”

“Well, yeah. I mean—is it bad if I forgot today was my birthday?”

“No, no,” he says with a shake of his head. “It isn’t. I know you don’t really care about your birthday.” _Spirits know I can relate._ “But I just wanted to do something nice for you. Even if you don’t care about it very much.”

“Well, thanks anyway for the cake. It looks great, babe.” His words are complemented by a kiss, and it makes Zuko forget all about his worrying.

They separate, and seeing the blue of Sokka’s eyes—blue like the ocean, blue like the sky, blue like home—makes him gasp. “Shit, I almost forgot.”

“Forgot what?” Sokka asks as Zuko gets up from the bed to open the door to their walk-in wardrobe. “Zuko, forgot what?” He asks again—and again, Zuko doesn’t answer. He just rifles through the boxes shoved into the top corner of one of the shelves, where he keeps his letters from Azula, looking for something—

“There it is!” 

_It_ is a nondescript rectangular box, as unnoticeable as the other box he keeps up here, with the second surprise he has planned for his boyfriend. Carefully, he picks it up and walks back to Sokka, who’s looking at him, extremely confused. It makes Zuko smile, just a bit, as he places it in his lap. 

Sokka just stares even harder. 

“Open it!” Zuko’s practically shouting, but he can’t bring himself to care as he slowly lifts off the lid and peers at the contents of the box.

“…paper?”

“Are you going to read what’s on the paper?”

“It’s early, okay? I don’t usually read just after waking up. Not my fault I’m not crazy like you,” he grumbles, pouting, but picks up the paper to read nonetheless. He reads the paper for a worryingly long time. Zuko can hardly keep himself from jumping out of his skin. Slowly, he sets it down. 

“Is this what I think it is?”

“I don’t know. What do you think it is—?” 

He hardly gets the words out before Sokka’s tackling him, his lips descending on Zuko’s face as they pepper him with kisses. They trail over his eyes, his cheeks, his scar, before settling on his lips. 

“I can’t believe you bought me tickets to the Southern Water Tribe!” Sokka exclaims as he pulls away. 

“I thought it’d be a good idea for you to see your dad and Gran Gran. I mean, you're on holiday, and we have all this free time, so—did I do good?”

“You did amazing, sweetheart,” he coos, his lips pulled up into a smile, and Zuko doesn’t realise how much he needed to hear him say it. He knew, objectively, that it’d be a great present when he purchased the plane tickets, but that voice in the back of his head, the one that sounds suspiciously like his sister, told him Sokka would hate it for whatever reason. He’s learnt to ignore it over time, especially when that voice can’t even come up with a very good argument as to why. But hearing Sokka say it.

_Woah._

Sokka lets him up, and they’re sitting across from each other on the ruffled bedsheets. Somehow, the cake is not smeared all over said bedsheets. Zuko picks up his own, and gestures towards Sokka’s. “Are you gonna…?”

He doesn’t move to grab it.

“I would,” he says, his voice teasing, “but I don’t have any cutlery.”

“Oh.”

Zuko leaves and comes back with two forks, blushing red up to his ears. Sokka just laughs, gravelly, and swipes a fork from his hand. 

“So, what’s on the agenda for today?” He pops a bit of cake into his mouth. Zuko watches his throat muscles contract and has to swallow. 

It’s only Sokka’s hand waving in his face that snaps him out of it. “Uh, well.” He coughs. His ears are still warm. “I was thinking of going out to lunch today? If that’s cool with you. And Katara’s been organising a dinner with everyone.”

“You’re all trying to make me fat. First cake, then Katara’s cooking? I’ll be plump as a partridge turkey by the end of day.”

“Like you could be fat. You’re all muscles and protein shakes.” 

“You love it. Just like I love you, and this cake, which, despite being a little burnt—”

( _Zuko glares at him over his fork, it most certainly_ isn’t.)

“—I’m joking, babe. I love it. It’s perfect. Just like youuuuu.”

“Shut up.”

His blush intensifies, if that’s even possible. He can feel it creeping down his neck like poison ivy, warm and _extremely_ noticeable against his pale skin. Sokka notices, of course, and his eyes track its steady progression across his body. When he opens his mouth to reply, his eyes are dark.

“Make me.”

Zuko drags him into another kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> tw: absentee father, neglectful parents, swearing, light -light- discussion of child abuse
> 
> tada
> 
> if u wanna yell at me abt zukka or atla in general i can be located on my [tumblr](https://epanouiii.tumblr.com) *sparkles*


End file.
